"Examines how inhabitants of the Oklahoma Panhandle throughout the 20th century used the semiarid lands that Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico did not want, and that Texas, after entering the Union as a slave state, could not have. Focuses particularly on agriculture and production of natural gas and helium"--Provided by publisher.

The book is divided into three sections. The Ffirst provides a general historical overview for the Jewish thought that follows. The second summarizes the variety of basic kinds of popular, positive Jewish commitment in the twentieth century. The third and major section summarizes the basic thought of those modern Jewish philosophers whose thought is technically the best and/or the most influential in Jewish intellectual circles.

Originally published in 1983 and now reissued, a portrayal of middle-class Englishwomen in the interwar period which draws on the work of such novelists as May Sinclair, Rosamond Lehmann and Rebecca West.

Alongside John Cage and Edgar Varese, Morton Feldman is regarded by many as one of the foremost American composers of the twentieth century. Evidence of his lifelong passion for music can be found in the numerous interviews and lectures he gave about his life and work. But despite his reputationand creative output, very little has been published on this charismatic figure. In Morton Feldman Says, editor Chris Villars has collected two decades of interviews, many available here for the first time, illustrating Feldman's creative process and his wide range of cultural interests and references,especially to visual art. Morton Feldman Says contains the first English translation of Sebastian Claren's biographical notes as well as conversations with Gavin Bryars, Kevin Volans, and Walter Zimmermann, as well as transcriptions of two of Feldman's lectures, held in Toronto (1982) andJohannesburg (1983).

Focusing on the cultural invention of Zionism, Michael Berkowitz explores how and why the Jewish nationalist movement was embraced by assimilated Jews of Western Europe before World War I. He pays special attention to the symbolism, artistic representations, and mythology that attracted European Jews to Zionism, which coexisted equally with the nationalisms of their home countries. The book was originally published in 1993.

Among the brilliant writers and thinkers who emerged from the multicultural and multilingual world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. For them, the trauma of World War I included the sudden loss of the geographical entity into which they had been born: in 1918, the empire was dissolved overnight, leaving Austria a small, fragile republic that would last only twenty years before being annexed by Hitler{u2019}s Third Reich. In this major reconsideration of European modernism, Marjorie Perloff identifies and explores the aesthetic world that emerged from the rubble of Vienna and other former Habsburg territories{u2014}an 2Austro-Modernism3 that produced a major body of drama, fiction, poetry, and autobiography. Perloff explores works ranging from Karl Kraus{u2019}s drama The Last Days of Mankind and Elias Canetti{u2019}s memoir The Tongue Set Free to Ludwig Wittgenstein{u2019}s notebooks and Paul Celan{u2019}s lyric poetry. Throughout, she shows that Austro-Modernist literature is characterized less by the formal and technical inventions of a modernism familiar to us in the work of Joyce and Pound, Dada and Futurism, than by a radical irony beneath a seemingly conventional surface, an acute sense of exile, and a sensibility more erotic and quixotic than that of its German contemporaries. Skeptical and disillusioned, Austro-Modernism prefers to ask questions rather than formulate answers

In contemporary philosophical debates in the United States "redefining pragmatism" has become the conventional way to flag significant philosophical contests and to launch large conceptual and programmatic changes. This book analyzes the contributions of such developments in light of the classic formulations of Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey and the interaction between pragmatism and analytic philosophy. American pragmatism was revived quite unexpectedly in the 1970s by Richard Rorty's philosophical heterodoxy and his running dispute with Hilary Putnam, who, like Rorty, is a professed Deweyan. Reinventing Pragmatism examines the force of the new pragmatisms, from the emergence of Rorty's and Putnam's basic disagreements of the 1970s until the turn of the century. Joseph Margolis considers the revival of a movement generally thought to have ended by the 1950s as both a surprise and a turn of great importance. The quarrel between Rorty and Putnam obliged American philosophers, and eventually Eurocentric philosophy as a whole, to reconsider the direction of American and European philosophy, for instance in terms of competing accounts of realism and naturalism.

By any measure, Hans Mark was a warrior of the Cold War. Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1929, he spent his early childhood in Vienna before escaping the Nazi Anschluss in 1938 and eventually emigrating to the United States, settling in New York. He graduated from high school in 1947, went west to attend the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned a PhD in physics from MIT. His work in nuclear engineering soon set him on a path that would be shaped by aeronautics, space exploration, and national defense. It was through advanced technology that Mark believed the United States could win the Cold War. In An Anxious Peace , Mark recounts in detail his life as a twentieth-century “rocket man.” Here is the inside story of one who—in a career spanning more than six decades—was on the technological front line, from long-range bombers to the space shuttle. Along the way, Mark reveals many never-before-told stories from life at NASA and more. Readers will revel in learning the background behind the decision to place a plaque on Pioneer 10 , a space probe that the NASA Ames Research Center designed to fly past the asteroid belt, Jupiter, and Saturn to collect data and images. Mark tells how he, Carl Sagan, and NASA insider John Naugle kept secret the addition of the now iconic 6x9-inch aluminum “message from humanity” until the probe had been launched. To this day Mark is pushing for a manned mission to Mars. One thing is sure: Hans Mark has left a major impact on academic and scientific communities that will be felt for decades to come.

"Newlyweds just barely out of their childhood, the ben-Yichyas make their new home in Jerusalem, in the shadows of the dark towering walls of stone and amid a community of devout Jews living in squalor. Who among these impoverished neighbors will buy the exquisite jewelry that Ezra fashions from gold and silver? And how will the young Yemenite couple maintain their ancient traditions and customs while struggling to weave themselves into the vivid tapestry of immigrants from distant lands who comprise the old Yishuv?"--from jacket.

Provides a systematic examination of process themes in Jewish theology. After tracing process motifs in the writings of contemporary Jewish thinkers, the text analyzes process theology as a form of postmodernism, discussing the tensions between it and more orthodox theologies.

Kumin reflects on the process of writing poetry and on life in the country

Not only do "modern" Jewish languages like Yiddish and Hebrew have their own Jewish writers, but every major Western tongue?from German and Russian to English and Portuguese?does as well. These writers are often at the crossroad between the two traditions: their Jewish one and their own national one. Is there such a thing as a modern Jewish literary tradition, one navigating across linguistic and national lines? If so, how should one define it? Ilan Stavans is uniquely qualified to answer these questions and to comment on the power and challenges of cultural margins and literary crossings. He has been at the forefront of an appreciation of the Jewish literary tradition that is less asphyxiating, more global. His reflections on Jewish Latin America have won him the nickname "pathfinder." This incomparable volume showcases Stavans's most insightful and provocative?and at times controversial?observations on transnational Jewish culture and literature. Stavans explores the problems and prospects of representing Jewish experiences through such media as Holocaust memoirs and Jewish museums; astutely comments on well-known intellectual figures, including Lionel Trilling, Isaac Babel, Primo Levi, Harold Bloom, and Walter Benjamin; engages in memorable conversations with Norman Manea, Joseph Brodsky, and Ariel Dorfman; and offers compelling glimpses of revelatory moments in his own life.

For almost twenty years, Ilan Stavans—described by the Washington Post as "Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast"—has interviewed path-breaking intellectuals and artists in a wide range of media. As host of the critically acclaimed PBS series La Plaza, he interviews guests on pressing issues that affect the Western Hemisphere today, asking hard-hitting questions on immigration, religion, bilingualism, race, and democracy. This book collects for the first time in one volume Stavans’s most provocative and enlightening interviews with Hispanics from both sides of the Rio Grande. Spontaneous and surprising, these conversations reflect Latino life in the United States in all its facets. Among the more than two dozen selections, Edward James Olmos talks about Hispanics in Hollywood; John Leguizamo describes how he shapes a stage show; author Richard Rodriguez reflects on his gang background; Esmeralda Santiago takes on the Puerto Rican stereotype; and Piri Thomas shares thoughts on the writing of Down These Mean Streets. "A conversation is a tango," writes Stavans, "for it takes two to dance it." Conversations with Ilan Stavans invites readers to catch the rhythm and enjoy these unique meetings of minds.

"The Elsewhere." Or, midbar-biblical Hebrew for both "wilderness" and "speech." A place of possession and dispossession, loss and nostalgia. But also a place that speaks. Ingeniously using a Talmudic interpretive formula about the disposition of boundaries, Newton explores narratives of "place, flight, border, and beyond." The writers of The Elsewhere are a disparate company of twentieth-century memoirists and fabulists from the Levant (Palestine/Israel, Egypt) and East Central Europe. Together, their texts-cunningly paired so as to speak to one another in mutually revelatory ways-narrate the paradox of the "near distance."